In 1971 (1), Lewis Thomas outlined 3 levels of health care technology. The first he called “nontechnology”: care that attends to ill patients but does little to alter the course of disease. Second were “halfway technologies”: those that do not eliminate diseases but at least postpone their effects. In this large group he put everything from solid organ transplantation to cardiac care units—what today we might call chronic disease management. Third was technology so transformative we often take it for granted, such as childhood vaccines to prevent diphtheria and antimicrobials to treat syphilis. He urged further investment in the basic sciences that support this third level of technology, arguing that the first 2 contributed greatly to the $60 billion spent at the time on U.S. health care and the third was “the only way to get the full mileage that biology owes to the science of medicine, even though it seems … like asking for the moon.”